This exercise asked to produce a graphics for packaging to be used on a range of organic biscuits for children. (Choc Chip, Raisin and Ginger) The packaging needs to include Illustrations extinct animals and the colour scheme should reflect the flavour of the biscuit. Before I could get out to the shops to do some market research into children’s packaging and to see what is currently on the market I wanted to list a number of extinct animals that could be used on the packaging.
Dinosaurs – Obvious choice, who doesn’t love dinosaurs! These would need to be recognised by young children so I would need to illustrate ones that are most popular within our current society. Films, books, cartoons and series’ generally reference The following:
Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Spinosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Diplodocus, Pterodactyl, Allosaurus, Iguanodon.
There are other extinct animals also referenced in books and films that children will also recognise:
Sabre Tooth Tiger, Dodo, Wooly Mammoth, Megalodon, Dire-wolf.
Whilst I am interested in producing graphics that would be slightly different than the obvious I feel using dinosaurs would be best fit for the brief and to attract the correct target audience.
I couldn’t find any Children’s organic biscuits packaging and so took photos from non organic biscuits and regular organic foods but that were targeted at children or the parents of children.
I also did do some online research from a number of organic foods for children.
Identica rebranded the PIP organic range in 2011. They retained their window logo from their parent brand but added a number of cute characters and bright vibrant colours. Identica creative director Sam Stone says, ‘Our aim was to create a playful, slightly mischievous design that would appeal to kids, while simultaneously reassuring parents about the quality of the product.’ The colour scheme also links to the flavour/fruit.
Holle was founded in 1933 rejecting chemical processing and preservatives. The product range includes baby milks and infant formula, baby porridges, baby weaning oil, teas and snacks. The illustrations again use simple, cute animal designs surrounded by photos of the main ingredients and the product itself. The typography is broken into two types. A thick hand written style that describe the product with a thin upper case font that explains what the product is. The colour scheme uses muted tones compared to the PIP product appealing more to a younger market of children around teething age.
Founded in 2006 by Paul Lindley and named after his daughter Ella. Ella’s Kitchen I would suggest is almost an older target audience range of the previous above products. The designs show more complexity that generate a story/narrative between a character and the flavour of the product. The fruits/flavours consist of actual fruit photographs whilst the characters are comically designed animals. Typography uses a similar hand written font over a pop art style, jagged text box with a halftone pattern drop shadow behind. I will use key points from all this research to help with the development of my packaging for the products.
I began to draw some basic dinosaur characters. I had fun changing the proportions of the head, making it oversized compared to the body to give it a younger child like look. I also experimented with the eye shape, pupil size and position.
From my research I found that the majority of packaging use a photo of the actual food/food flavour. I took some photographs of some cookies ready to add to my designs.
I also selected an overall colour scheme to reflect each flavour but not too diverse that it would look like a completely different company selling the product. To appeal to both children and adults I decided to keep the characters very cute, simple and comical but against a clean white background. I also wanted the text to be digital but have a hand written style. Taking notes from my research I also wanted to play around with upper and lower case fonts and maybe using a comical play on words similar to Ella’s kitchen packaging.
I originally wanted to produce a watercolour character but decided to go all digital with watercolour and textured brushes. Once drawn in pencil I scanned in and used procreate and the studio pen to outline before adding selected colours and textures.
With each character I tried to get them interacting with a real image of a biscuit onto a paper bag ‘cookie’ packaging.
I think the designs turned out really well and target the correct audience of both children and parents of children. Other thing I could try is using more buzz words from the industry such as preservative free, no additives, sugar free etc. I could also try using a block colour into the background.
Illustration 1 